So my wife and I decide to do this Discovery Health Body Challenge. It sounds pretty good and hey, you get 3 free months at Bally’s. So about two weeks ago we log on the website. Oh, the website is down? Hmmm, I’ll try again later.
later…
Hey I can get in now! Time to sign in. What’s this? I’m clicking “Next” and it’s just sitting there like Jerrod at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Hmmm, I’ll just come back in a few days. Where’s those Ho-Ho’s?
a few days…
Nice. I can finally log in and get all my settings personalized. What’s this banner on top of the webpage? I will automatically get signed out in 6 minutes? Why? “More traffic than was anticipated.” There not making it easy for Average Joe to get his fat butt in gear. But at least I can go to the Mall of America on Saturday and weigh in (don’t forget the free membership). There’s a crepe stand nearby.
Saturday
8:00 am: I better call and see when a good time to come would be. The guy at the store says there’s already a big line forming. “Better to come back in the afternoon” he says. OK. Fine. I got a couple of Slim Jims with my name on 'em.
3:30 pm: Drive 45 mintues to Mall of America. Park. Arrive at store. There’s a huge line. Oh, it’s the crepe stand. But the weigh in line is even bigger. Better ask the nice young lady what’s up. “I’m sorry. We’re all booked up. We’re not weighing in anymore. But fill out this form and we’ll send you a packet in 4-6 weeks.” “Well at least I’ll still get my membership. Better late than never!” “I’m sorry. We gave all those out by 10 am.”
You’ve got to be kidding me! All this stress has made me add another 5 pounds to the holiday belly I already acquired. I went from being highly motivated to severly pissed off. I need a pizza…
So the Discovery Channel didn’t realize how many overweight people there are out there in this country who’d jump at an opportunity like the one they offered. You missed out because you didn’t jump on the bandwagon early, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put forth the initiative on your own terms. By any chance is there a YMCA or a public park or just an area for you to exercise in that’s within a reasonable distance of your house? If so, I’d recommend going there and putting forth the effort to do the same thing you would’ve done in a more DIY fashion. To be honest, most people crash and burn when it comes to exercising if it’s not on their own terms and they’re not motivated. If you’ve got the motivation to stand in line for Og knows how long for what you thought was a “free membership,” then you’ve got the motivation to do a little research and plan your own workout routine. Think of it this way: if you’d gone to Bally’s and failed in your pursuit, you may have blamed it on being intimidated by the already fit people. By creating your own workout, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if you fail, and, therefore, you take responsibility for your own weight problems.
I sincerely hope you’re being facetious about all the references to eating during that rant, otherwise I think a good chunk of the problem would be a lack of willpower and self-motivation. You CAN lose weight and get in shape on your own; it just takes more initiative than having someone else be your exercise babysitter. (Please don’t assume I think this is easy; getting fit and losing weight is hard for a lot of people, myself included. I just happen to not be able to afford to do it anyway but the DIY way.)
Good luck.
Sounds like another bait-and-switch scam that Bally’s is so good at. Offer an unbelievable offer on TV, then be shown that that offer really is not that good. But if you sign up today, they will give you a special rate!
That’s what they did to me about 12 years ago. Screw those assholes, I have a membership at a YMCA.
Yeah, pretty much the “time-out” shit happened to me, so I said fuck it. I am going the Slim-Fast route and actually try to get some exercise in in between not doing anything.
My sister-in-law only had to wait five minutes in line at the mall, though. Plus she got the little package and her membership. She never could get signed up on the site, though.
I was being somewhat sarcastic about the food references. I have a little more control than that. I just makes me angry that they would have Health and Human Services Director Tommy Thompson do television ads to encouraging Americans to do this challenge and then they act so surprised when so many people want to sign up. I’m not sure if these people have seen the lines at McD’s but it ain’t pretty. Minnesota has no parks this time of year. It’s too frigging cold out.
To make matters more interesting, my cousin went through the whole sign-up procedure, only to be told that she couldn’t have the free Bally’s membership unless she gave them her e-mail address. She said “I don’t have an e-mail address.” The bubbleheaded, saline-enhanced aerobics bunny got all boggled and said “You don’t have e-mail?!?!!”
Cousin of Tea: “No.”
Bunny: “Not even like, at work?”
Cousin of Tea: “No.”
Bunny: “Ummmmmmmmm, lemme check.” To coworker: “Um, what if they don’t have e-mail?”
Co-worker: “Who doesn’t have e-mail?”
Bunny: “This lady claims that she doesn’t have an e-mail address.”
Co-worker: “You gotta have e-mail to get the membership.”
Bunny: “You have to have it.”
Cousin of Tea: “Where is that on any of the promotional materials you used to get people to come in and sign up for this stuff? Where is that on any of these documents? Can you show me where it says, anywhere, on any of the contractual documents here, than an e-mail address is required?”
Bunny: “----” (Eyes glaze over during attempt to process big words.)
These people offer you the free membership into a health club. They want to lay the whole thing out for you in easy to follow steps. They offer you diet tips. The provide you with a complete fitness plan that will increase your activity and ability later in life. They are probably giving you a few extra years of life if you actually stick to the program in a long term manner.
And you bitch.
It’s their fault that you are inactive, overweight, and unhealthy. It is their fault that you are no longer going to be participating in a health plan, even though, I seem to recall, that running, cycling, swimming, and walking are generally pretty cheap.
Threemae, I think all of the world knows about Hotmail. Some of us had Hotmail accounts before the thing was bought out and bastardized by the idiots of Redmond.
But for the record, my cousin does have an e-mail account for work purposes. But the only reason why Bally’s would need an e-mail address for this program would be to send out marketing spam to everyone who participated. They were looking for a cheap, easy way to do targeted marketing to people who had already acknowledged that they wished to get into better shape.
That’s a load of horse hockey. No organization gets any e-mail address of mine without a good rason, and that ain’t a good reason. And my cousin didn’t think so either, hence her refusal to share that private information. Why make it easier for someone to send you something that isn’t going to do you one bit of good?
As for your other post, you’re clearly not paying attention. The complaint is that the program was put together shoddily. They didn’t promoted it to the highest heavens, even trotted out a member of the President’s cabinet, then failed to have sufficient resources to handle the response.
Any time you throw something open to the general public, you plan for at least double the amount that you’d expect to get in your wildest dreams, then double the number over again. If you run out of something, like the location that ran out of Bally’s memberships early in the day, you prominently post notices in as many locations as feasibly possible so that people don’t wait for hours in line just to be disappointed when they get to the front. And when you’re going to demand personal information, you’d better have a statement that explains the reason why those disclosures are necessary, a privacy policy stating how the information will be used that’s within easy reach and have workers who are informed about the proper way to handle objections to disclosure for people who are sensitive about giving multibillion dollar industries free assistance in advertising their products.
This should’ve been especially obvious to whoever was planning the in-person signup events when the company became aware that the demand was overwhelming as evidenced by the fact that the webservers couldn’t handle the load.
As I said, the whole thing was FUBARed. They planned poorly, they trained their people poorly and get in over their little heads. Someone needed to think long and hard about this before it happened, one can only hope that they took some lessons away from it after the fact.
What pissed me off was that there were no weigh-in sites close to me, and, of course, no Bally’s near me, either. This was something that I’d have loved to do, but couldn’t.
Maybe they’ll file some of this under “lessons learned” and do a better job next year. But I doubt it.
Hmmm… Last I checked, and I have been checking, it was $80 a month for the cheapest dual membership in my area. That’s not exactly in my price range right now. And like I said, Minnesota this time of year is not conducive to outdoor activities. The exact point of my OP is that they did NOT lay out the whole thing for me. They did NOT provide a diet plan. They did NOT provide me with a fitness plan. All things they promised.
